Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor (27 January 1826-12 April 1879) was a Lieutenant-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and the son of President Zachary Taylor.

Biography
Richard Taylor was born in Springfield, Kentucky on 27 January 1826, the son of Zachary Taylor. Taylor graduated from Yale College in 1845, and he volunteered as his father's aide-de-camp during the Mexican-American War while serving in the US Army. He inherited his father's sugarcane plantation on his sudden death in 1850, and he was elected to the Louisiana Senate in 1855 as a member of the American Whig Party, the Know Nothings, and the US Democratic Party. Taylor failed to mediate between the Democrats under Stephen A. Douglas and the Southern Democrats under John C. Breckinridge at Charleston, South Carolina in 1860, and he would join the Confederate States Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861. Taylor became the aide-de-camp to Braxton Bragg, and he fought as a Brigadier-General in Virginia. In 1863, Taylor was transferred to Louisiana, where he fought against Union invasions of lower Louisiana. Taylor's Army of Western Louisiana failed to hold Bayou Teche and retake New Orleans from Nathaniel P. Banks' Union forces, and his army retreated to Texas in 1864. Taylor defeated a Union invasion of Texas during the Red River campaign, but he lost Alfred Mouton and Thomas Green during the fighting. On 4 May 1865, he surrendered to General Edward Canby while commanding a department in Alabama, and he moved his family to New Orleans after the war. He died of edema in New York City in April 1879 at the age of 53.